Poppy has brought to my attention the fact that I have been inconsistent in my This Week in Homeschooling updates. So today I’m going to post one, just for her. No promises about improved consistency on my part in the future, though, Poppy.

Language Arts

Reading

We’re nearing the end of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” I still can’t remember who the half-blood prince is, and I’m trying to make myself refrain from googling it.

Poppy and I read “May B” for our mother-daughter book club this week — we all agreed that it was a dark & difficult story — and also finished “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and Raina Telgemeier’s “Smile.”

Pete has been without an assigned reading book until today, when I went downstairs and grabbed a copy of “Tom Swift and His Giant Robot” that my father-in-law picked up for him at a flea market a few years ago. Pete’s career plans currently involve building robots and inventing things, so I’m guessing he’s going to enjoy Tom Swift.

Spelling

Both kids are still doing well with Spelling City. I’m using a list of fifth-grade spelling words from K12reader.com for Poppy, and Pete is working off the Dolch sight words list.

Writing

Poppy is still working independently through her writing curriculum. I check in on her progress periodically, but she’s doing a pretty good job following the book’s instructions.

Pete and I got back to work on his writing this week. He wrote a paragraph about his plans for the weekend (it involves a good deal of candy) as well as an acrostic poem about Easter.

Memorization

The kids are working on memorizing all of the US presidents. We’re up to Nixon so far.

Math

Pete is working on memorizing multiplication facts. We’ve had some very lovely days this week, weather-wise, so I wanted to find some ways to take our school outside. One of my favorites was Multiplication.com’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Outdoor Math game. I made a grid of numbers with chalk in the driveway, and the kids took turns tossing a pair of pebbles onto it and telling me what the product of the two numbers would be.

We opted not to make it a competition, but competitively minded kids might enjoy playing in teams and keeping score.

Geography

We focused on Virginia this week. We did zero fun projects to go along with our study.

Co-op classes

Pete and Poppy are taking a “Mad Scientist” class together at co-op this semester, and from the sound of it they’ve mostly been working with chemical reactions. Pete is also taking a Ninja class, in which he’s learning some Japanese history and making marshmallow blow guns. Poppy’s other class is Desserts Around the World. They made luqaimat with rosewater syrup this week. It’s an Arabic doughnut typically made for Ramadan, and they were crazy delicious.

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!